By surprise, science has discovered
amazing seven-day
cycles in the very building blocks of plant and animal life. These
newly found sevens, or "septans," also lie buried in us humans -- deep
in our metabolic, hormonal, and neuronal networks. This startling
discovery has wide-ranging effects that you will want to understand.
The following article explores those effects by answering three
questions. First, does the formerly unknown, automatic rhythm of sevens
hold the secret to one of history's most perplexing enigmas -- the
origin of the seven day week? Second, what could these innate,
autonomous rhythms mean for us? And lastly, what will this new
knowledge tell us about the biblical Sabbath and the Creator God?

Society's seven day
calendar week is the only major rhythm
of human activity that is totally oblivious to external nature. This
so-called
"social week" rests on mathematical regularity alone. We may casually
assume that our week is really a division of the moon cycle. If that is
our
assumption, we forget that the lunar cycle is not a twenty-eight-day
cycle, but
approximately twenty-nine days, twelve hours, forty-four minutes and
three
seconds -- or 29.5306 days between new moons. A precise quarter of the
lunar
cycle amounts to the uneven figure of 7.38625 days. So any week using
that true
length would begin at different times of the day every time the cycle
started.
There is just no way to neatly divide the lunar cycle into weekly
blocks of
complete days. (1)

Then what about the
sun?
Doesn't the cycle of seven relate
to the center of our solar system? Again, no! The 7-day week is also
independent from the annual solar cycle of 365 1/4 days. A "year" of
52 weeks would have just 364 whole days. Nor is the week in harmonic
sympathy
with the star year of 366 1/4 days. Star days or "sidereal days" are
about four minutes shorter than solar days (an observer will see a
particular
star at the same position four minutes earlier on successive nights).
In short,
there are no known external rhythms in nature that could explain the
near
universal existence of the seven day social week.

Yet, the importance of
the seven-day week -- or heptad, a
series of seven -- is monumental. Eviatar Zerubavel, in his book The
Seven Day Circle (The History and Meaning of the Week), notes
that:

"a
continuous week, for the establishment of settled life with a high
level of
social organization [is indispensable] . . . . Only by defining the
week as a
precise multiple of the day, rather than as a rough approximation of a
fraction
of the lunar month, could human beings permanently avoid the problem of
having
to handle loose remainders and, thus, introduce into their lives the
sort of
temporal regularity that they could never attain with the quasi week." (2)

Professor Zerubavel is
saying that a regular, predictable
week plays a major role in developing our civilization.

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

We take for granted
the
commonness of a world-wide seven-day
week, but that hasn't always been the case. "Weeks" varying in length
from three to nineteen days have existed in past cultures. In parts of
Africa
three, four (especially along the Congo river),
five, six and eight day weeks are found, and always in association with
market
days. Along the Congo
the word for week is the same as the word for market. In North America the Mayas of Yucatan -- skilled
mathematicians and pyramid
builders -- had clusters of five-day weeks. In South
America the Muyscas had a three-day week, the Persians and
Malaysians a five-day week. (3)

The ancient Etruscans,
who inhabited the land the Italians
do now, had an eight day market week which they passed on to the Romans
no
later than the sixth century B.C. As Rome
expanded it encountered the seven-day week and for a time attempted to
include
both. But the coexistence of two weekly cycles was unworkable. The
popularity
of the seven-day rhythm won out and the eight-day week disappeared
forever. (4)
Emperor Constantine eventually established the seven-day week in the
Roman
calendar and in 321 A.D. set Sunday as the first day of the week.

Apart from the
biblical
record, historians have had
difficulty placing the precise beginning of the seven-day week. It is
simply
acknowledged as an ancient practice of very early origin in the
evolution of
civilization. (5) The historical record becomes specific,
however,
with the appearance of Israelite religion and culture. In the
millennium before
Christ the distinctive of Israel's
(and Judaism's) seven-day week became widely known. Its special seventh
day
devoted to worship and rest -- the Sabbath -- became an identity
trademark that
has endured to the present.

Jeremy Campbell, in
his
comprehensive inquiry into the human
nature of time, jauntily titled Winston Churchill's Afternoon Nap,
gives Israel
full credit for introducing the seven-day week. "In all the ancient
world,
so far as is known, there was no seven-day calendar cycle except for
the Jewish
week, which existed at the very beginning of the monarchical period in
Israel
[approximately 1000 B.C.] and perhaps even earlier than that. A
seven-day week
was unknown among the ancient Greeks, whose holidays were held at very
irregular intervals, since they fell on the days of religious feasts in
different cities up and down the country.

Besides the Israelite
heptad, or seven day period, another
tradition contributed to the forming of our modern seven-day week. Long
before
the Greeks, Babylonian astronomers began to identify and name the seven
heavenly bodies (sun and moon included as "planets") which they
observed moving about the sky. Lacking our modern telescopes, they did
not spot
Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. Neither did they name weekdays after those
seven "planets."
Assigning planets to the days of the week is attributed to the
Egyptians. But
once a planet became attached to a day, the seven day "planetary
week" came into existence.

".
. .
The planetary week, however, was a relative newcomer compared with the
Jewish
week. . . [and] may have evolved from [it], and was undoubtedly
influenced by
it. Presumably the seven-day structure of the Jewish week came first,
and later
people began to call the days of the week after the names of the
planets. Our
modern week is a blend of both traditions." (6)

Zerubavel concludes
that
"the astrological seven-day
week, which evolved in Alexandria
during the
second century B.C., was introduced to the West through Rome sometime
toward the end of the first
century B.C. If it was Alexander the Great's conquest of Greece,
Babylonia, and
Egypt that, in bringing those three civilizations together, was
indirectly
responsible for the evolution of the astrological week in the first
place, it
was Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt that, in making Rome heir to the
glorious
Hellenistic heritage, was responsible for importing that oriental cycle
to the
Occident." (7)

He also concludes that
while the Jewish and astrological
weeks evolved independently, they were eventually joined together by
another
power. ". . . It was the Church that was responsible for integrating
the
Jewish and astrological weeks together and spreading the seven-day
cycle
throughout most of the world. (8) Yet Christianity was by
no means
the only carrier that helped spread the Jewish week around the globe.
Starting
from the seventh century, Islam was responsible for importing this
seven-day
cycle to the east coast of Africa, the Sudan, Central Asia, large parts
of
North and West Africa, and even as far as to the Malay peninsula and
parts of
Indonesia." (9)

Both Christianity and
Islam inherited the seven-day week
from the Jews. Both established worship days separate from the Jews:
Sunday for
the Christians, Friday for the Moslems -- both days touching the
original
Sabbath. These three religions with their three worship days clustering
together have played key historical roles in bringing the beat of a
seven-day
week to all the world.

"THE SEVEN-DAY WARS" (10)

Because of the bond
between religion (Christianity
especially) and the week, there have been two major attempts in modern
times to
obliterate the seven-day week in favor of a different length week. The
first
attempt came in the late 1700s. The humanistic French Revolution
promised the
people a new Age of Reason to replace regressive religious
superstitions. A new
secular, "rational" week of ten days was devised and approved by the
ruling Convention in October, 1793. (11) The ten-day
"decade" was patterned after the decimal principle, having ten days
divided into ten hours, of 100 minutes each with each minute divided
into l00
decimal seconds. Every tenth day, the "decadi" was reserved for rest
and celebration of various natural objects and abstract ideas. Notre
Dame was
renamed the Temple
of Reason.

"The real target of
the
reform campaign," notes
Zerubavel, "was the Christian [Church]. . . and from a symbolic
standpoint, the abolition of the seven-day 'beat' expressed the wish to
de-Christianize France far more than the attempt to make life there
more
'rational.'" (12) During the Reign of Terror the ten-day
"decade" was imposed by force. Churches were closed and allowed to
open only on the tenth day. People were even forbidden to wear their
good
clothing on the traditional Sunday, with severe fines and even jail
sentences
given to violators. Religion, however, proved too resilient and the
attempt to
destroy the seven-day week (1793-1805) failed completely . . . as did
the First
Republic of France.

Not learning a thing
from France's
failure, the Communists
ruling the Russian Revolution tried a second, even more radical
experiment 140
years later. Their aim was the same: abolish religion by abolishing the
seven-day week. The Soviet scene was a five-day continuous work week
which
called for 80 percent of workers to be on the job on any given day -- a
plan
which left 20 percent to share a day off. There was no longer a
national day
off. The advertised reason for the new rotating five-day week was to
increase
production.

After eleven years of
disappointing production and epidemic
irresponsibility in the work place (1929-1940) Stalin called it quits
and gave
the Soviet people back their seven-day week. Concludes Zerubavel, "In
both France and the
Soviet Union, some desperate
attempts were made
by two of
the most ruthless totalitarian regimes in history to completely destroy
the
Judeo-Christian, seven-day week. In both societies, to this day, it
still
remains the dominant 'beat' of social life." (13)

CULTURE OR BIOLOGY --
WHICH CAME FIRST?

In light of these
massive
failures, we must face the
question "why seven?" Since the seven-day cycle is not a naturally
occurring event in our external environment, can culture alone explain
how a
whole society six billion strong now beats to a seven-day rhythm?

Tracking the
development
of the seven-day week in human
events, as we have briefly summarized above, has been a far easier task
for
historians than explaining how the cycle originated in the first place.
Researchers really have only two choices: 1) say that the week is a
cultural/religious invention of unknown date which gradually took root
in the
ancient world, evolving with time to the near universal acceptance we
find
today; or, 2) take the biblical record of the origin of the week
(Genesis,
chapters 1 & 2) at face value -- it was made by God at creation.

For convenience we may
call option one -- a standard,
textbook explanation -- "the cultural/religious outgrowth model;"
option two naturally becomes "the biblical model." It comes as no
surprise that most modern historians reject the second, or biblical
model, and
spend their ink documenting the first one, attempting to explain the
strange
phenomenon of a seven-day week.

However one rates
those
attempts, recent discoveries
revealing innate body rhythms of about seven days now call that
cultural
outgrowth model into question.

The relatively new
science of chronobiology has uncovered
some totally unexpected facts about living things, as Susan Perry and
Jim
Dawson report in their book The Secrets Our Body Clock Reveal.
"Weekly rhythms -- known in chronobiology as "circaseptan
rhythms" -- are one of the most puzzling and fascinating findings of
chronobiology. Circaseptan literally means "about seven;" see chart.
Daily and seasonal cycles appear to be connected to the moon. But what
is there
in nature that would have caused weekly rhythms to evolve?

"At first glance, it
might seem that weekly rhythms
developed in response to the seven-day week imposed by human culture
thousands
of years ago. However, this theory doesn't hold once you realize that
plants,
insects, and animals other than humans also have weekly cycles. . . .
Biology,
therefore, not culture, is probably at the source of our seven-day
week." (14)

Campbell summarizes the
findings
of the
world's foremost authority on rhythms and the pioneer of the science of
chronobiology: "Franz Halberg proposes that body rhythms of about seven
days, far from being passively driven by the social cycle of the
calendar week,
are innate, autonomous, and perhaps the reason why the calendar week
arose in
the first place." (15)

What a bombshell!

THE RHYTHMS AROUND US

Mankind has always
been
aware of rhythms -- they surround
us. We live with daily rhythms of tides, light and darkness, monthly
rhythms of
the moon, seasonal rhythms of birth, growth, harvest, hot and cold, and
annual
cycles of the sun, migrations, floods and drought. We have also
observed cycles
in our bodies which interact with those around us such as our daily
sleep
rhythms, daily temperature and blood pressure fluctuations, and the
menstrual cycle
which follows the lunar cycle precisely averaging 29.5 days.

However, until
recently
science has been aware of only the
more obvious rhythms. Now the new science of chronobiology has begun to
roll
back frontiers revealing a universe replete with rhythms.

Franz Halberg, the
brilliant scientist and founder of modern
chronobiology, first began his experiments in the 1940s and now heads
the
Chronobiology Laboratories at the University of Minnesota.
He offers
us this rather detailed description of his field:

"Chronobiology
is the eminently interdisciplinary science of interactions in time
among
metabolic, hormonal, and neuronal networks. It involves anatomy,
biochemistry,
microbiology, physiology, and pharmacology, at the molecular,
intracellular,
intercellular, and still higher levels of organization. The compounds
coordinating a time structure -- proteins, steroids, and amino-acid
derivatives
-- provide for the scheduling of interactions among membrane,
cytoplasmic, and
nuclear events in a network involving rhythmic enzyme reactions and
other
intracellular mechanisms. The integrated temporal features of the
processes of
induction, repression, transcription, and translation of gene
expression remain
to be mapped . . ." (16)

Simply put:
Chronobiology
is the study of how living things
handle time.

Chronobiology is no
longer a minor science. Perry and Dawson
note that it ". . . is now being studied in major universities and
medical
centers around the world. There are chronobiologists working for the
National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as for the
National
Institutes of Health and other government laboratories. Chronobiology
is
becoming part of the mainstream of science, and it is changing our way
of
looking at life and time." (17)

"Don't confuse the
science of biological rhythms with
the quackery of biorhythms," warn Perry and Dawson. "The two are as
unlike each other as astronomy and astrology." (18)

There are five major
rhythms that beat in our bodies to
insure our health and happiness (see chart below). The daily or
circadian
rhythm (from the Latin for "around a day") is the easiest to detect
and measure. We are born with our own set of circadian rhythms that in
time
become synchronized with our environment. Our rhythms vary slightly
from
individual to individual (23.6 hours, 24.3 hours, 25.4 hours, etc.) and
they
usually shorten as we age. For some unknown reason, women tend to have
shorter
circadian cycles than men.

If all our individual
cycles vary from a precise 24 hour day
or 168 hour seven-day week, wouldn't we in time get terribly out of
sync?

"Fortunately," write
Perry and Dawson, "our
bodies are able to reset themselves each day to the twenty-four hour
rhythm,
thanks to many powerful time cues. Chronobiologists call these cues zeitgebers,
German for 'time givers.' Some can be found outside our bodies, some
are
located within, and others are part of our daily lives . . . .

"As if we didn't have
enough zeitgebers to keep
our bodies in sync with the world, our internal rhythms also help
synchronize
each other, for none of the myriad rhythms within our bodies works in
isolation. Some rhythms rise while others fall -- like a modern dance
in which
the dancers move seemingly independently of each other, but which
actually has
been carefully choreographed. The dance is so complex that
chronobiologists are
only beginning to understand the interrelationships of the rhythms." (19)

MYSTERIOUS WEEKLY RHYTHMS

The most intriguing of
all biological rhythms are those set
to a clock of about seven days. In his chapter "The Importance of
Time," Jeremy Campbell reports:

"These
circaseptan, or about weekly, rhythms are one of the major surprises
turned up
by modern chronobiology. Fifteen years ago, few scientists would have
expected
that seven-day biological cycles would prove to be so widespread and so
long
established in the living world. They are of very ancient origin,
appearing in
primitive one-celled organisms, and are thought to be present even in
bacteria,
the simplest form of life now existing." (20)

One of Franz Halberg's
amazing discoveries is that of an
innate rhythm -- about seven days -- occurring in a giant alga some
five
million years old on the evolutionary time line. Because this
microscopic cell
resembles a graceful champagne glass, the alga (plant) is popularly
known as
mermaid's wineglass (Acetabularia mediterranea). When this
"primitive" alga is subjected to artificial schedules of alternating
light and dark spans of varying length over many days, this single
intact cell
is somehow able to translate all that manipulation of light and
darkness into
the measurement of a seven-day week!

As Campbell
says, this inherent rhythm has to do with the internal logic of the
body, not
with the external logic of the world. Many more examples could be
given.
Involved experimentation with rats, face flies, plants and other life
have
revealed circaseptan rhythms similar to that of the mermaid's
wineglass. (21)

If the seven-day week
is
an invention of culture and
religion, as most historians would have us believe, how do we explain
innate
circaseptan rhythms in "primitive" algae, rats, plants and face
flies? These forms of life have no calendar, can't read the Torah and
don't
know Saturn from Santa Claus.

Part II

In Part One we looked
at
what science has uncovered
concerning the innate seven-day (circaseptan) rhythms of living things
and how
these new discoveries are forcing us to reconsider the reigning
theories on the
origin of the seven-day week. We learned that this mysterious seven-day
beat is
entirely independent from environmental cycles of sun, moon and stars
-- the
only major rhythm of human activity that is totally oblivious to
external
nature, resting on mathematical regularity alone.

We saw that history
credits ancient Israel
as the
culture that bequeathed the seven-day week to the rest of the world. In
his
book The Seven-Day Circle, Eviatar Zerubavel plainly states the
"continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history paying no
attention whatsoever to the moon and its phases is a distinctively
Jewish
invention." (22) Modern attempts by the French and Soviets
to
erase the seven-day week -- with its imbedded religious ties -- ended
in
complete failure.

But was it culture and
religion alone that eventually moved
earth's six billion people to now harmonize in a universal seven-day
rhythm?
The new and respected science of chronobiology (the study of how living
things
handle time) says no. Its discovery of circaseptan ("about seven")
rhythms in human and other life forms points toward a biological
explanation
for the mystery of the week. In his study into the human nature of
time, Jeremy
Campbell states: "Inner time structure, in certain of its
manifestations,
seems to determine outer time structure, rather than the other way
round.
Rhythms of about seven days arose in living creatures millions of years
before
the calendar week was invented, and may conceivably be the reason why
it was
invented." (23)

AN ORCHESTRA OF RHYTHMS

Chronobiology is
continuing to document just how highly
rhythmic we humans are. Most of our many ticking clocks are difficult
to
detect; they operate just below our conscious awareness. Innate and
hidden in
our cell structure, the mysteries of biological time have waited for
the
resolving power of modern computers to appear. Just as the electron
microscope
allowed scientists to peer deep into the structure of living cells,
computer
"magnification" and analysis now make visible internal clocks we didn't
even know existed. The most surprising of them all is the circaseptan. Campbell
explains that
"certain biological clock systems have been discovered only through the
use of sophisticated computer programs, and when they are brought to
light in
this way, often surprise us. By showing us these invisible restrictions
on our
temporal freedom, scientists modify our knowledge of human nature, and
they do
not always do so in predictable ways. They are drawing a new map of the
temporal anatomy of body and brain, and the map tells us truths we
could not
know otherwise."

"It
would be a big mistake," Campbell
warns, "to assume that this time anatomy is simple, that the clocks of
the
body all tick to a single measure, like watches in a jewelry store. A
better
image is that of an orchestra, a silent orchestra made up of numerous
players
under more than one conductor, each contributing in special ways to the
harmony
and complexity of the whole." (24)

These myriad
synchronizing rhythms give substance to the
well worn phrase "harmony of the body." The "loudest" of
the body's oscillating frequencies is the 24-hour cosmic cycle of day
and night
-- and until recently this circadian rhythm received most of the
attention.

The surprise
appearance
of an internally generated seven-day
rhythm, independent from all environmental influences, provides
chronobiologists with intriguing possibilities for a new understanding
of how
the body's complex orchestra of rhythms works.

Our bodies are
carefully
designed for self-protection even
in matters of time. On the one hand we are an orchestra of rhythms, on
the
other our bodies demand stability and sameness --an automatic pull to
homeostasis (the maintenance of a beneficial equilibrium, a
self-regulated
norm). Campbell
explains: "The two regulatory systems, one imposing sameness in time,
the
other providing orderly change, are complementary rather than being in
conflict. A body function alters in a rhythmic fashion, and homeostasis
stabilizes the altered state of that function.

"The
clocks are able to generate regular periodic variations because
homeostasis
resists random, irrelevant variations. Both systems collaborate in
maintaining
the special time structure of the body rather than simply surrendering
to the
time structure of the environment." (25)

We organize time on
our
own terms and to our own advantage.

Most, if not all, of
the
millions (literally!) of daily
functions that occur in our bodies are organized within some rhythmic
system.
Some bodily tasks occur quickly in seconds, minutes or hours, others
slowly
over months. How can this orchestra of cycles governing such bodily
activities
as diverse in time as metabolism, maintenance, growth, defense and
reproduction
possibly be coordinated?

OUR INTERNAL SEVEN-DAY
CLOCK

Chronobiology has
found
the answer. As Campbell
explains:

"A
particular function of the body may have a spectrum of rhythms with a
dominant
frequency that is very different from the dominant frequency of the
spectrum of
rhythms in another function, perhaps widely separated in space. Yet no
matter
which frequency component is the primary one in any given function, all
rhythmic systems of the body probably possess an innate circaseptan
frequency
so that when they cooperate to perform a specific task which is
body-wide, say,
an immune reaction, the reaction occurs on a weekly schedule.

"That schedule is a
compromise between too much time
and too little. A day and a night, which is the dominant frequency in
the
spectrum of many routine body chores, would not be long enough to
complete the
complicated array of chemical and other activities that compose the
immune
defense reaction, and a month would be too long." (26)

In addition to being
the
key coordinating rhythm for the
rest of the body's many rhythmic interactions, a seven-day cycle has
been found
in fluctuations of blood pressure, acid content in blood, red blood
cells,
heartbeat, oral temperature, female breast temperature, urine chemistry
and
volume, the ratio between two important neurotransmitters,
norepinephrine and epinephrine,
and the rise and fall of several body chemicals such as the stress
coping
hormone, cortisol. "In fact," Perry and Dawson note, "weekly rhythms appear
easiest to detect when the body is under stress, such as when it is
defending
itself against a virus, bacterium, or other harmful intruder. For
example, cold
symptoms (which are really signs of the body defending itself against
the cold
virus) last about a week. Chickenpox symptoms (a high fever and small
red
spots) usually appear almost exactly two weeks after exposure to the
illness." (27)

Doctors have long
observed that response to malaria
infection and pneumonia crisis peaked at seven days. Organ transplants
face
similar crises as the body's immune system attack the foreign organ. Campbell
explains:
"When a human patient receives a kidney transplant, there is a rhythm
of
about seven days, a predictable rise and fall in the probability that
the
body's immune system will reject the new kidney. A major peak of
rejection
occurs seven days after the operation, and when a serum is given to
suppress
the immune reaction, a series of peaks occurs, with increasing risk of
rejection, at one week, two weeks, three weeks and at four weeks, the
time of
the highest of all." (28)

Chronobiology's
pioneer,
Dr. Franz Halberg, made another
startling discovery -- a three and a half day, or circasemiseptan
harmonic of
the circaseptan (seven-day) frequency. This phenomenon seems to occur
when the
living organism is under extreme attack or has somehow been critically
altered.
When the giant one celled alga "mermaid's wineglass" (described in
Part One) had its nucleus removed, it doubled its seven day frequency
to one of
about three and a half days. (29)

He has also found that
when cancer strikes humans our
circaseptan frequency is doubled to its circasemiseptan harmonic. Why? Campbell
believes there
must be rhyme and reason: "Circaseptan and circasemiseptan rhythms are
not
arbitrary, even though they seem to lack counterpart rhythms in the
external
environment." Dr. Halberg calls the move to a three and a half day
harmonic of seven a "spectral compromise . . . the system does its own
reshuffling." (30)

The deeper we
investigate
the inner workings of life, an
even more complex, intricate and absolutely marvelous display of design
begins
to appear. Out of the mind-numbing complexity of life a certain
organizing
rhythm starts to surface. The millions of living parts begin to respond
to a
rhythmic resonance broadcast on certain set frequencies. These parts
innately
know to tune their receivers to the proper sympathetically vibrating
frequency
-- their beat. Just as we tune our radios and music suddenly springs to
life,
every living cell has imbedded in its primal genetic material a rhythm,
a
clock, a beat, a frequency, a resonance that helps it get in sync to
live and
function as designed.

Now we discover that
the
beat all life is tuned to is seven.

"In Franz Halberg's
view," summarizes Campbell,
"a central
feature of biological time structure is the harmonic relationship that
exists
among the various component frequencies. A striking aspect of this
relationship
is that the components themselves appear to be harmonics or sub
harmonics,
multiples or submultiples, of seven, a number that has played a
disproportionately large role in human culture, myth, religion, magic
and the
calendar." (31)

How did seven come to
be
imbedded deep into the ancient
genetic building blocks of life? Why is seven the key coordinating
rhythm for
life's myriad complexities?

LIFE BEGINS AT SEVEN

We've seen that the
cultural/religious model doesn't
sufficiently explain why humans organize their activity around a
seven-day
weekly cycle -- a rhythm divorced from the environment. The biological
model
buttressed by the recent discoveries of circaseptan rhythms in life
forms
"millions" of years older than ancient Israel, clearly puts
biology before
culture. The further uncovering of circaseptans in plants and animals
leaves
the cultural model relevant only to humans, and then after the fact.

But the biological
model,
while having the evidence for the
"very ancient origin" of circaseptans, still doesn't have an answer
for why. Why seven? And why seven in "primitive" one-celled
organisms, in bacteria? Why seven in all life forms?

Is this not compelling
evidence for a common beginning, for
common design, for a common designer who could so powerfully program
his
creation to a cycle he set in motion? To a rhythm tuned to his own
activity of
work and rest? Let's see if yet another model can answer the remaining
questions
and better fit the evidence of history, culture, religion and biology.

For that model we will
now draw evidence from one of
mankind's oldest books -- the Bible. This book, which claims
inspiration and
direct revelation from an almighty God, begins with the story of
creation. This
story is framed within seven daily cycles.

In the first six days
of
evenings and mornings the Creator
established orbits of sun, moon and earth for time, cycles and seasons;
he
prepared the earth to receive living things; he formed fully developed
plant,
marine and animal life; and on the sixth day made his creation zenith
-- man,
male and female.

"So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and
female he created them. . . . God saw all that he had made, and it was
very
good. And there was evening, and there was morning -- the sixth day"
(Gen 1:27, 31).

God's work was now
over,
but the week wasn't. Nor was God
finished with creating. As Dr. Charles V. Dorothy, ACD's Director of
Biblical
Research, has convincingly explained in his Genesis Classes (available
on
tape), there is no chapter division in the original Hebrew. What our
English
Bibles call 2:1-4 should be the conclusion, the apex of chapter one.

"By
the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the
seventh
day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and
made it
holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had
done"
(Gen 2:2-3).

His last act in the
creation week was to rest and make holy
the seventh day as a memorial to his creation. He closed the cycle of
creation
at seven days and set the clock of time moving forward to this day. In
all life
resides that circaseptan beat echoing, like a rifle shot in a vast rock
canyon,
backward in time to the first seven days of dynamic creation.

Each living thing made
testifies of brilliant design, of
divine craftsmanship, of marvelous function, of intricate interactions
with the
environment and other life forms, of mystery, of beauty. From roses to
redwoods, from salmon to sharks, from elephants to eagles, all life
cries to be
inspected, admired and praised for its peculiar display of divine
handiwork.
Even man marvels in awe when he beholds himself:

"For
you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise
you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are
wonderful, I
know that full well" (Ps 139:13-14).

The fingerprints of a
divine creator cover his creation. To
behold life on earth in its billions of varieties and go forth claiming
it to
be the result of blind, random, evolutionary accidents, takes a
"faith" and a "belief" that defies understanding or logic.

Not only did the
Designer/Creator leave his finger prints on
everything he made, he left his calling card bonded to living cells
telling us
when he made life: in a seven-day creation week. That's when he wound
up the
clock of life and set it ticking in each of its forms to a rhythm of
sevens.

He gave life the
frequency of seven. It's the beat of
creation, a harmonic that points directly to the life-starter,
life-giver
himself!

The more I look at
creation and especially the miracle of
life, I am forced to conclude with the psalmist that only "The fool
says
in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps 14:1). In the New Testament the
Apostle Paul stops short of calling unbelievers "fools," but makes
this point:

"For
since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his
eternal power
and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what
has
been made, so that men are without excuse" (Rom 1:20).

Why, after exhibiting
his
divine power in six days of
creation did God choose to rest? Did he "need" to rest? What can we
learn about his divine nature in this different, yet creative act? What
does
God do to time to make it "holy"? Why did he think this cycle of six
work days and a seventh of rest so important that he included it in the
middle
of the Ten Commandments?

Is there some
information
about the divine nature contained
in the creation week that mankind and even Christianity has missed? Is
there
knowledge to discover in the seventh-day Sabbath that can help humans
to
spiritually get in sync with their Creator? Is there important data to
discover
that can put us in harmony with the Divine Nature?

What did Christ have
in
mind when he said the seventh day
Sabbath "was made for man," and when he further declared himself
"Lord even of the Sabbath"? (Mk 2:27-28).

PART III

The modern science of
chronobiology (the study of how living
things handle time) teamed with the resolving power of computers
recently
discovered--much to everyone's surprise--innate seven-day (circaseptan)
cycles
in a wide variety of life forms, including us humans.

Clearly then the
seven-day cycle is not a cultural or
religious invention. Rather, we can now say these four things about the
rhythm
of seven: 1) it is of "very ancient" biological origin; 2) it is
independent from environmental cycles of sun, moon and stars; 3) it is
imbedded
in all living cells and in short, 4) it is the beat to which all life
is tuned.

In humans, we found
the
circaseptan rhythm to be the key
coordinating rhythm for a complex myriad of cycles, all harmonizing to
make up
our body clock. The biological base of seven-day cycles (also called
heptads or
circaseptans) clearly gives this amazing building block priority in
time: it
existed before culture or religion ever recognized a seven day week in
history.
Such an intricate, indisputable base and such a fundamental common
design
require us to reconsider this double question: is there a common
beginning, a
common designer of all life?

We have suggested that
the recently uncovered, stunning
evidence of circaseptan rhythms should cause inquiring minds to look
for
answers in one of mankind's most ancient books -- the Bible. This book,
as
commonly known, claims to be an inspired and direct revelation from an
almighty
God. But what does it tell us about the Creator's relation to time?
Does the
Bible say anything regarding time cycles, especially one built on seven
[days]?
And most importantly, does this revelation say anything about the
effect of
life rhythms on the most neglected element in human beings: our spirit?
[Put
another way, the Bible reveals God to be Spirit (Gn 1:3; Jn 4:24). Is
it
logical that the Creator would leave his creatures with no spiritual
avenue to
reach him?]

TIME TELLS A STORY: AND A
STORY TELLS TIME

When God created
mankind
he also created time -- or did he
perhaps connect man to a paced rhythm already a part of his being?
Ultimately
we cannot know that answer, but we do know the following. As we learned
in our
Genesis class (see add below), the early chapters of Genesis portray
the
foundational relationships of our world. "In the beginning" the great
Elohim gave man relationship to himself as Maker, to his mate, to all
other
living things. God also gave all humans, in their parents Adam and Eve,
a
relationship to the movement of life and action-- time.

Stephen W. Hawking,
acclaimed as the most brilliant theoretical
physicist since Einstein, in his work A Brief History of Time
remarked:

"The
concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe.
This was
first pointed out by St.
Augustine.
When asked: What did God do before he created the universe? He didn't
reply: He
was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions. Instead, he
said that
time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did
not
exist before the beginning of the universe"(32) [emphasis
ours].

Whenever time might
have
begun, it is inseparably connected
to human origins in the creation story. In fact, the story in Gen 1 is
framed
within seven daily cycles. The chronology of creation builds each day
in this
pattern: "evening and morning, day one;" "evening and morning,
the second day" (33)[fn: note the switch from "one"
to "second"]. This building pattern reaches its next to last height
with the making of man and woman on the sixth day (v 26-31). The crown
and
climax of the week, however, is the seventh day when God rests and
hallows it
as a memorial of all his hands had wrought (the account continues into
2:4, as
commentators recognize). God who made time now made holy the time of
the
seventh day.

"And
God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested
from all
the work of creating that he had done."

Later when the Creator
established Israel
as a
nation (Ex 12-19), he gave his newly redeemed people ten commandments
to be the
spiritual and moral pillars upon which a national character could be
built (Ex
20). In the middle of that law he thundered from a mountain top was a
unique
commandment, one which man would never have thought out for himself.
"Thou
shall not murder" makes civilized sense, but "rest on the seventh day"
is another matter. Many who honor this great law code themselves assume
that
its basis must be arbitrary. Let us look carefully at the two versions
(statements) of the Ten to see what reasons are given.

"Remember
the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all
your
work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. . . .For
in six
days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is
in them,
but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath day and
made it holy"
(Ex 20:8-11).

Scripture gives a
reason
all right, but it is one grounded
in the spiritual world: it pictures a divine act in creation itself.

Now Deuteronomy (the
name
means "second law" or
repetition of the law).

"Remember
that you were slaves in Egypt
and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand
and an
outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to
observe the
Sabbath day"
(Deut 5:15).

This time Scripture
gives
a quite different reason: the
people who have the revelation of the Sabbath were delivered--given
rest from
slavery.

So Scripture presents
two
important motives behind the
Sabbath. But no one, to our knowledge, has ever demonstrated a
physical/scientific reason behind this law. Based on the brief
summaries of a vast body of research given in the previous
installments, we can
now add a third reason to the two given in Scripture. In the ebb and
flow of
time, God has engineered-in a cycle of pause points -- places to stop
from the
mechanics of living to consider the purpose of life itself. The
divine
design calls for this life-harmonizing pause to occur every seven days.
The Hebrew verb shabath means to cease/rest; hence our name (noun) for
the
seventh day "Sabbath" also comes from Hebrew (shabbath).

Although the word
Sabbath
does not mean seven, it has become
inextricably bound up the concept of seven--a significant number in the
Bible.
It will enrich our understanding of the importance of this numeric
concept if
we quickly trace a few of its uses throughout the Bible.

SEVENS, SEVENS AND MORE
SEVENS

The number seven has
special place among numbers used of God
in Scripture. Till now we have had our focus on the seven-day
(circaseptan)
cycle in living things, on the biblical creation account and on the
significance of the seventh-day Sabbath. But the number seven is
associated
with things and times other than the week.

Seven's place is
eminent
among "sacred" numbers in
scripture. For example: the creation account, and thus the Bible
itself, begin
with seven Hebrew words which contain a total of 28 (4x7) letters in
those
seven words (Gn 1:1). The New Testament also opens with seven words
introducing
the genealogy of Christ (Mt 1:1). Beyond those beginnings, seven is
typically
associated with acts of completion, fulfillment and perfection. We can
certainly see those meanings coming through from our study of creation.

The rhythm of seven is
a
pattern for even greater blocks of
time. We find a sabbatical year cycle of letting the land rest every
seven
years (34); and there was a year of jubilee, which followed
seven
times seven years (the fiftieth year)(35). There were seven
sacred
days on the calendar God gave Israel.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread in the spring and the Feast of
Tabernacles in the
fall each lasted seven days (36). The Feast of Trumpets
arrives on
the first day of the seventh month -- which also marks the beginning to
the
civil year and is believed to be the day of the month when creation
began (37).
A congregation of annual holydays appears in the seventh month -- the
Day of
Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day, each bringing
clear
pictures of the coming Messianic age (38).

Old Testament worship
ritual often came in sevens: the
sprinkling of bullock's blood seven times and the burnt offering of
seven
lambs; the cleansed leper was sprinkled seven times (39).
Diseased
General Naaman was told by Elisha to dip in the Jordan
river seven times to be
cleansed of his leprosy (40). The priests encompassed Jericho seven
times,
Elijah's servant looked for rain from God seven times (41).

In the New Testament
Jesus fed the four thousand from seven
loaves of bread and a few fishes, the seven basketsful collected
afterward may
teach us that Christ can satisfy our hunger (42). He sent
seventy
disciples out to evangelize -- symbolically all mankind which was
viewed as
being comprised of seventy nations (43). Revelation, the
great book
of future events, if full of sevens. There are seven churches; seven
golden
candlesticks; seven stars; seven angels; seven lamps of fire; seven
spirits of
God; a book of seven seals; a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes;
seven
angels with seven trumpets; a dragon and a beast with seven heads;
seven last
plagues; and seven golden bowls full of the final wrath of God.

The prophet Daniel was
told the Messiah would arrive after
"seventy 'sevens'" (44)and in the first chapter of Matthew
the genealogy of Jesus is organized into three groups of fourteen (2x7)
generations.

Scripture highlights
other "sacred numbers" each
having special symbolic meaning, but seven seems to rise above them all
as the
rhythmic action of a living God in the affairs of man. From creation,
to a call
to pause and worship, to the plan of God in prophecy we find a rhythm
of seven
as if a fingerprint, a calling card of God.

AN OASIS IN TIME

Billy Graham once
summed
up the two things he believed
mankind needed most to know: 1) The nature of the One who created and
orders
the universe; and, 2) The nature of man himself. He is correct, of
course, and
this needed knowledge is at the center of all truth.

At the very center of
the
ten commandments, Yahweh
("the Lord") our God placed a unique seventh day rest law, forever
enshrining in time and symbol the core truth that he is our personal
Creator
and Savior/Redeemer. This is the "holiness" of the Sabbath -- a
remembrance and a personal reaction to the primal fact that we were
made by God
"after his image" for a divine purpose.

And what is that
divine
purpose? The Creator's purpose makes
plain man's proneness to evil, his lack of virtue, his mortality-- and
a divine
purpose providing a graceful solution, a way of deliverance from evil
and
death, and, most importantly, a divine purpose that leads to eternal
life as
sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters of Christ (Rom 8;
Heb 2).

Just as chronobiology
has
discovered the harmonizing power
of the seven-day (circaseptan) cycle to keep our bodies in sync
--homeostasis,
or equilibrium--the seventh-day Sabbath was given to keep us
spiritually and
morally in sync with ourselves, our Maker and his divine plan for us.

Desmond Ford, in his
book The Forgotten Day, notes:

"The
Sabbath, by putting all things in true perspective, meets that need of
the soul
to worship and adore the highest good. The distinction between Creator
and
creature is marked out by creation's memorial, and weekly the reminder
is
afforded that none of the things made are adequate to satisfy the human
spirit,
and therefore they should never receive first place in the soul's
adoration." (45)

The Sabbath serves as
an
oasis in time--given to refresh and
nourish us on our journey through life.

This truth is
supremely
important; it is why God calls this
time holy. Only the Sabbath commandment begins with the word
"remember."
This most critical knowledge under heaven is enshrined in the call to
"remember" -- remember that there is a living God; that we are made
in his image with great purpose; that he is a loving God who has given
us a
beautiful earth to enjoy; and as a Father he gives us guidance in how
to live
upon it. And remember that he has the power to deliver us from the
captivity of
sin and death, to create in us a new heart, a new character, and to
give us
life eternal in the never ending Kingdom of God.

Can we now grasp why
God
made the seventh day holy and
included in the great moral/ethical package he delivered from Mt.Sinai?
Seen from this perspective, is it any wonder that the Son of God would
say
"the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mk
2:27)?

Ford offers a
mini-sermon
that God may have delivered to
humanity's [the] first parents.

"It
is
as though God had said to Adam after his creation on the sixth day,
'Adam,
behold this wonderful world -- full of objects animate and inanimate
which call
for admiration; but beware -- none of them, nor all of them, can
satisfy you,
not even Eve. You were made for me, your heart can find rest only in
me, its
source; therefore let us spend your first whole day together as a
pattern for
your life hereafter.'

"At that juncture God
ushered in sacred time with the
glory of the first sunset Adam had ever seen. What a wonderful time
that first
whole day of existence must have been for Adam and Eve! They walked and
talked
with their Maker and found in him their fountain of joy and their
source of
truth and strength. That first Sabbath was God's acted-out invitation
to all
men to find their rest in him."(46)

God has invited his
creation to pause with him every seventh
day for a walk in the cool of his garden. To commune with him and enjoy
the
nourishing fruit and clear water of his special oasis. Refreshed and in
harmony, we then set forth for another six days of work, achievement
and
accomplishment.

HARMONY vs DISHARMONY:
WHAT OUR MODERN WORLD HAS LOST

Mysteriously, the
profound meaning of a seven-day weekly
cycle and of a holy Sabbath are lost to our present world culture. The
human
suffering that flows from the loss of this primal knowledge is beyond
calculation!

Instead of a world
full
of the knowledge of the Eternal, (47)
in worship, harmony and rest with him every seventh day, we have a
world
writhing in unrest and disharmony. We have a world that is
characterized by its
ignorance of God -- its pain and tears catalogued by a list of the
commandments
of God it wantonly or ignorantly breaks. This is the price paid for
turning
backs to God and his revelation.

"The
wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness
and
wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since
what may be
known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of
the world God's invisible
qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly
seen, so
that men are without excuse. ...Although they claimed to be wise, they
became
fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to
look like
mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. ...They exchanged the
truth of
God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the
Creator
-- who is forever praised." (Rom 1:18-26).

In our "savvy" age
exchanging the truth about
creation for a lie has been made quite respectable through the
pseudo-science
of evolution. It functions, however, as an intellectual idol just as
effectively
as wood totems did in past cultures -- a natural, earthy substitute for
the
Holy Creator God.

It seems easier, less
threatening and more free for man to
look inward to find a god. Man even fancies to make himself a god; to
be his
own lawgiver, his own maker, to make himself the sum of all things.
Through a
variety of philosophies he attempts to divine-up power, invent a
purpose,
discover a destiny and even pursue immortality.

If mankind looks
outward
(instead of inward or upward),
another "goddess" offers herself. The modern goddess Evolution sits
secure upon her throne in the temples of academia. Worshiped as the
force
"mother nature" who creates through the miracle of mutation, chaos,
confusion and blind chance. She "creates" by some unknown, untestable
and unobservable laws of disharmony is able to produce a universe of
design and
ordered life.

What great faith is
required of evolutionists to explain
creation. What devotion to storied theory! What belief! No longer need
we look
in churches for the prime examples of superstitious faith.

But we do not live in
a
vacuum. Our refusal to
"remember" who the Creator is has set in motion a flow of thoughts
and actions which in time destructively erupt into a variety of
plagues. These
ever present negatives that characterize the "human condition," that
rob our race of its peace and happiness, are a woeful testimony that
something
is missing. When we humans reject God's wise instructions on how to
live on his
earth, we are doomed to march to another beat. We are resigned to learn
from
short term experience as we stumble along in moral and spiritual
darkness. We
are out of sync with our God and as a result, are out of harmony with
ourselves
and our environment.

By turning our backs
on
the majestic God and his revelation
of the awesome program for his created sons and daughters, we have spun
out of
sync with God. We have reduced our horizon from an omnipotent,
limitless God to
a mortal man groping along in the continual accident of evolution.
"Evolutionary"
man, if such we are, has gotten out of rhythm with life itself.

A WEEKLY TRIP TO EDEN

A key control to keep
humankind in harmony with the created
order and with the Creator/Savior himself is the Sabbath institution.
It isn't,
by any means, the sole path to discovering God and his plan, but it has
that as
its prime purpose.

Here is how the
biblical
"circaseptan" [the
Genesis heptad] could operate to accomplish a harmonizing
rhythm between
man and God. At the national societal level, a day of rest requires
intellectual, philosophical, legal and moral commitment to its
institution.
Commercial and social affairs would be integrated into a six-day work,
seventh-day rest cycle. The Sabbath would be used by society for
physical rest
and relaxation, for family and social bonding, for biblical teaching,
for
meditation and spiritual renewal.

At the personal level,
a
Sabbath would provide an organizing
principle for daily life. God's seven-day cycle, [the biblical heptad]
would become our cycle and thus our schedules, plans, and affairs would
all be
influenced by it. Rather than attempting to fit the things of God into
our too
busy world, we would instead, with purpose, be engaged in fitting our
lives
into the plan and rhythm of our Creator. Now that we know of the
biological
base, the circaseptan of life, this would truly be "getting into the
flow" of power, in tune with the pulse of God's universe.

Of course, mere
outward
adoption of a seventh-day rest cycle
for a nation or an individual without real intellectual and heart
involvement
would yield only limited benefits. Without sincere spiritual
involvement, a
Sabbath institution would become in time an ossified relic of history,
a
cultural tradition. It would sink to a symbol devoid of message and
power -- a one
dimensional day like any other day of the week.

Witness how the
Sabbath
day impacts the average Jew in
modern Israel
today. Except for a few radical legalists, it is a secular day of
nationalistic
identity borrowed from the religious roots of an ancient past. Witness
also how
little the Western world is influenced by its substitute Sabbath --
Sunday (48).
It's good to stamp our money "In God We Trust," but the power of the
phrase is unlocked only when an individual or nation truly trusts in
the living
God.

Symbols can only point
to
the power, to the knowledge, to
the message that stand behind them. In the case of the seventh day,
we've been
given a symbol of time, a rhythmic sign of time in unstoppable motion.
We have
in this day a symbol, which if examined, pondered and tasted, would
tell us of
creation and of the nature of the Creator himself. It would tell us of
our
salvation, of our future and of our eternity.

The seventh-day
Sabbath
also offers us a perfect picture of
the soon-coming Kingdom
of God, his
Millennium of
rest and peace on earth. Utopia follows the age of man that has ended
in futile
work, much suffering and many, many wars. The millennial Sabbath is a
welcome
relief coming as it does with the return of the Creator and Savior
himself, Jesus
Christ. He ushers in a new Garden of Eden that envelops the entire
earth. He
cleans the environment, and with his saints rebuilds a beautiful world
-- as it
has always been his plan to do. And once again, like Eden, God will
walk with his people in the cool
of the day. He invites us to enter that rest with him.

"Therefore,
since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful
that
none of you be found to have fallen short of it. ...For somewhere he
has spoken
about the seventh day in these words: "And on the seventh day God
rested
from all his work." ...There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the
people
of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work,
just as
God did from his.

Let us, therefore, make
every effort to enter that rest, so
that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience"(Heb 4:1-11).

But if not pondered,
if
not entered, the Sabbath remains an
unlocked symbol -- its benefits limited, its great message unpublished.

TIME TO GET IN TIME WITH
GOD

Physicists labor to
measure the rhythms, movements, orbits
and energy of stars and galaxies in the hope of seeing back in time to
the very
origins of the universe -- to its creation, the "big bang."
Astronomers look heavenward with ever deepening penetration searching
to find
clues to when and how the universe was created. Steven Hawking has this
insight:

With
the
success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have
come to
believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of
laws and
does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the
laws do
not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started
-- it
would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to
start it off.
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a
creator. (49)

God did "wind up the
clockwork" leaving his
fingerprints all over the clock. The new science of chronobiology has
had some
of science's most impressive successes in seeing back to creation with
its
discovery of "primitive origins" to the seven-day cycle found in
human cells and other life forms.

God somehow coded into
the infinite complexities of life a
clock that ticks to the time of a seven-day rhythm. We humans have no
control
over these innate circaseptan rhythms and benefit best by simply living
in
sympathetic harmony with them. More importantly, the seven-day cycle in
physical nature points beyond temporal reality to a far greater
spiritual
reality.

God, with masterful
design, uses time itself and a seventh
day rest to call his creation to pause and listen. He has a message
which
explains why we were created and for what special purpose. His words
are so
majestic, so exciting, so unbelievable, so beyond our mundane world
that they
could only be comprehended as coming from God himself. His message
dispels
ignorance, solves life's grand mysteries, and offers a future too
beautiful to
be true.

His personal message
introduces himself as our creator, he
gives us dignity and a special relationship to himself by declaring we
have
been made in his image, he then offers to save us into an eternity with
him --
if we but follow him. He invites us to join him on his journey, to walk
with
him, to talk with him, to learn from him, to even rule with him. How
could we
refuse such an invitation?

The mystery of the
seven-day cycle was never intended to be
a mystery, but a call from the Creator to get in harmony, in sync, with
him. It
is high time we get in step with God.